Any organisations buying or replacing safety signage are being warned by a workplace equipment supplier to ensure their new signs comply with proposed legislation that could see all workplace signage standardised throughout Europe.
The changes will see ISO 7010, which promotes the use of internationally recognised symbols on safety signs, become EN 7010 and the change means the standard could become written into both UK and EU law as opposed to simply being a recommendation.
Martyn Lowe, QESH Advisor at Slingsby which already sells EN 7010 compliant signs, says: “This will be a major shake-up of legislation surrounding safety signs and although the introduction date is still to be confirmed, it will affect nearly all businesses and public sector organisations throughout the UK. The motivation for these changes is that every country has a growing population of non-native speaking employees so text based signs, or those with unfamiliar pictures, might not be understood. Instead standard signs featuring highly comprehensive symbols will be used on all signage throughout Europe so an emergency exit sign in Birmingham looks exactly the same as it would in Budapest.
“It’s always advisable to carry out signage audits on a regular basis to check all signs are relevant to potential risks and fully comprehensible. However this legislation is another important factor to consider because any organisations currently buying signs could soon end up having to replace them again if they don’t comply with the new standards. Although initially this may seem like an inconvenience, safety signs remain one of the easiest and cheapest ways of preventing workplace accidents so it’s worth doing and will definitely prove to be money well spent.” Under The Health and Safety (Safety Signs and Signals) Regulations 1996, employers are required to provide specific safety signs whenever there is a risk that has not been eradicated by other means. In cases where a safety sign would not help to reduce the risk, or where the risk is not significant, there is no need to provide a sign.
